Eight things that your bank will never ask you – but a fraudster will.

New ways to bank – by telephone, the internet and now your mobile – have saved us a lot of time but have also opened up opportunities for fraudsters.

Their tricks normally involve pretending to be your bank, whether on the phone or via email. After convincing you that they are genuine, they ask you to carry out various plausible-sounding actions that will result in your account being raided.

Here are eight things that fraudsters might ask you to do – but your bank never will.

1. Call or email to ask you for your full Pin or any online banking passwords

If your bank does contact you, perhaps to check that a transaction was really made by you, it would not ask for more than three digits from your Pin to confirm your identity, and would never ask for online passwords.

Having posed on the telephone as a bank employee to extract key security information such as your full Pin, the criminals may say they are sending an official courier to your home to collect the corresponding card. These couriers will have bogus “official” identification.

3. Ask you to authorise the transfer of funds to a new account or hand over cash

Often criminals, posing as a bank, will instruct you that your account is under threat – usually from a “corrupt employee” or “cyber criminals”. You will be instructed to make an online transfer of money into a new “safe account” – actually the fraudster’s – or hand cash to a bogus employee.

4. Ask you to carry out a ‘test transaction’ online

Criminals pretending to be from a bank sometimes email customers asking them to perform a “test” transaction online, perhaps because of a “technical problem” on their account.

5. Send an email with a link to a website that asks you to enter your online banking details

This is the well-known “phishing” scam.

6. Ask you to email or text personal or banking information

Even if the email address appears to belong to the bank.

7. Provide banking services through any mobile apps other than the bank’s official apps

To download your bank’s mobile banking app, follow the link from its official website.

8. Call to advise you to buy diamonds, land or other commodities

Reputable investment firms do not cold-call. Fraudulent “boiler rooms” can be very persistent and persuasive, so just put the phone down.